AROUND THE WORLD

Grass writes letter to explain Nazi service

August 23, 2006|By Items compiled from Tribune news services.

WARSAW, POLAND — German novelist Guenter Grass said in a letter to the mayor of his hometown of Gdansk that only in his old age has he found the "right formula" to talk about having served in the Waffen SS.

"In the years and decades after the war, when the terrible scope of Waffen SS crimes was revealed, I kept to myself this episode from my young years that was brief, but which weighed on me heavily," Grass wrote in the letter to Mayor Pawel Adamowicz dated Aug. 20 and made public Tuesday. "However, I did not erase it from my memory."